


Any Way You Want It

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Bisexual Characters, First Loves, Football, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Queer Characters, reggie has two dads, self love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 13:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11624340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: Reggie's fourteen and thinks he kind of likes guys. Knows he kind of likes guys. And Moose and his huge, soft, smooth-skinned warm hands aren't helping.That's how it starts, anyway.





	Any Way You Want It

Here’s how it starts. 

Moose has soft hands. Huge, flat, smooth-skinned warm hands that could crush Reggie’s finger bones like snapping twigs if he tried it. Moose’s palm can fold over all of Reggie’s hand until it disappears from sight, enclosed in the hot, damp summer sweat of his palm.

The first time they do this, they’re out in the baseball field hitting fly balls. The grass is so overgrown there that it scratches his calves right up to the knee, and there’s dust and gravel in his nose when he breathes. It’s hot. Reggie has blisters up his thumb from his baseball bat and a dad who yells at him if he can’t hit straight.

“You got little hands,” says Moose.

He notices because they’d been going hand-over-hand on the shaft of the bat, racing each other to the top, just for something to do. They’re a couple of inches apart in the middle of the field, wet palms leaving brief imprints on the aluminum, and Reggie feels sweat running down the backs of his knees.

It’s the first thing Moose has said to him since they’ve known each other. Other than a handful of phrases and weekly grunts of acknowledgement, which don’t count, because everyone on the baseball team gets those. They’ve been playing little league baseball together for two years now.

“No, I don’t.” Reggie says.

Stubborn. Stupid.

Moose hasn’t said two words to Reggie in two years, but he’s been out here alone all afternoon with him, sending pitch after pitch in strong, steady lines over the plate, and when Reggie starts hitting too many in a row, Moose puts a bit of a curve on the ball.

Then they get tired of that, so they start playing the hand-over-hand game, jockeying for dominance in a game that doesn’t exist, doesn’t ever need a winner. That’ll mean something later.

Reggie holds out his hand, flat, palm up. Moose crushes his against it, and sure enough, Moose’s is twice the size.

“You got big hands.” says Reggie.

And Moose smiles, a big gentle genuine smile, and closes his palm around Reggie’s hand until it disappears. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

* * *

 

Here’s how it starts.

Reggie’s fourteen and thinks he kinda likes guys. Knows he kinda likes guys. And that’s fine, because his dad and Rick are _his dad and Rick_ , and even if his dad was straight as an arrow he doesn’t pay enough attention to his only kid to know or care if Reggie decided he kind of liked fist-fucking grape jell-o packets.

It’s just that he kind of likes girls too. And he has that word shoved way down deep in his hip-pocket, searing hot against his thigh, the word from his guiltiest internet searches - _bisexual_. That word. And sometimes he takes it out and holds onto it like a treasure and other times he puts it away and tries to forget about it. He hasn’t shown it to anyone else yet. He wouldn’t mind, he just hasn’t.

Not yet.

Because he has his eye on one girl in particular - or at least, that’s what he told people all throughout the summer before freshman year, and that’s the lie his friends still believe.

“Hey,” he says to Moose in the locker room. “I’m taking Midge to the dance tonight.”

“Like hell you are” says Moose, and fastens his two hands - his huge, soft, gentle, wrap-around warm-skinned hands - into the collar of Reggie’s shirt and slams him up against the wall so his feet dangle and stars blink in front of his eyes.

 _Nothing but a little friendly competition_ , he says to Chuck.

 _Just keeping their relationship fresh_ , he says to Archie. _They should thank me._

“She’s my girl.” says Moose, holding him up against the wall with arms that could probably rip a train in half. “So quit playing around.”

“We’ll see about that,” he says. 

The bait doesn’t stick. Moose releases him, and he slides down the wall, while a bunch of the guys laugh and swat at Moose with their towels, or wink in his direction. It’s all a show for them: the Moose and Reggie vaudeville act. New episodes every night, or at least every JV football practice. They respect Reggie for it. Respect Moose for always rising to the occasion.

Archie rolls his eyes like he’s seen everything, and Reggie knows he’s going to ask later. Ask why he can’t let things go, why he always has to push so hard, what he gets out of it.

Dominance, he thinks. Masculine dominance.

Any excuse for Moose’s hands on him. 

* * *

 

Reggie thinks he might pierce his ear. It might make him look a little bit urban, a little bit chic, like the men in the magazines his dad left all over the house. Older, definitely. More mature.

Archie thinks he’s crazy. Archie asks if he’s on drugs. Archie, says Reggie, is just jealous because he knows Fred would never let him do a thing like that. 

Later he learns Fred had an earring in high school and probably wouldn’t have minded. Two ears, actually. Victor and Rick both agree that he was really hot with them. Reggie leaves the dinner table when they start getting into specifics: the man used to buy him ice cream cones from McDonald's on the way home from boy scouts and he doesn’t need to think about that.

At some point it becomes an argument where Victor says “at least I had a shot with him”, and Reggie closes his bedroom door.

But really, he’s going to go through with it. Even after Chuck says, to uncomfortable assent from a handful of his half-clothed teammates, it’ll make him look gay.

Even after Carla, who he takes out on Wednesday, says she can’t imagine ever respecting a man wearing jewelry.

But he’s waning. And by the time one of his teammates drops the word that starts with F in relation to his earring, he already knows deep down he didn’t want it.

* * *

 

Reggie’s fourteen and Moose really needs help with his english homework.

“If I flunk, then I flunk the whole year,” he says, looking uncharacteristically nervous in the empty classroom, hands clasped anxiously in front of him like a girl being asked to prom. “And Betty’s got a lot on her plate, so-”

“Hey,” says Reggie. “No sweat.” Reggie has straight A’s in English. And physics, actually. And gym. He’s what you’d call a well-rounded guy, though he’s never once had his parents tell him they were proud of him for it.

“No sweat for you.” Moose looks miserable. “I might as well be trying to learn Greek. It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Hey, don’t worry. A couple hours with me, you’ll make Shakespeare look like Archie Andrews.”

Moose actually cracks a smile at that. “You sure?”

“Come on, you’re talking to Mantle the Magnificent.”

They meet in the library after last bell, Moose balancing a stack of notebooks and dog-eared paperbacks as tall as his chin, Reggie pretending resolutely not to notice him come in at first, keeping his right profile to the door because he knows that’s his best side.

“Hey,” says Moose awkwardly when he’s reached Reggie’s elbow. Reggie glances over at him, shutting the notebook he’d been working in. He wonders if Moose noticed the way the late afternoon light puts amber in his hair.

Maybe he does, because all in a rush he says:

“I like your shirt today.”

Only it’s plain white, and Moose’s eyes haven’t moved from his face.

“Thanks,” says Reggie, which is rare enough of a response, and a momentary panic seems to pass between them, a mutual, senseless fright of being alone together, of something he can’t name and can only feel. He sees it in Moose’s eyes, and for a minute he thinks the big guy is going to bolt. Take the F. For a minute he wants him to.

And then Moose drops his gaze and sets down his books on the table with a thump like an earthquake. “Muscles like yours, you should have just brought the whole locker,” Reggie cracks, and the world rights itself again - the world where Reggie makes wisecracks and Moose carries heavy things and that’s all they ever have to do.

* * *

 

Reggie’s fourteen and he’s gonna be a big football star. Because that’s the quickest way he can think of to make his dads proud of him.

He’s on the right track: he’d made JV, and comparing himself to everyone else on the team, he knows he’s one of the best. Top 11, absolutely. Top 5, if he’s honest with himself, and he’s confident enough to say it out loud. For some reason everyone else thinks he’s an asshole because of this, but Reggie’s just helping them out.

Moose figures he owes Reggie one after getting him through english, and is more than willing to meet him out behind the school on weekends to toss a ball around. Rick starts smelling scholarships and starts taking an interest in his son again, and after the disasters he’d made of his juvie soccer and little league careers, Reggie’s determined not to fuck this one up. Plus, it feels really good to spend this much time with one of his dads. 

Soon Reggie’s waking up at five every morning to train, and spending every waking moment not devoted to classes, practice, or dinner thinking football. Rick’s never satisfied, which is good, because it keeps Reggie from being satisfied too.

“You’re getting a nice body,” Vic approves one afternoon after school. “Nice suntan, too.”

So he has approval from both of them shining on him like twin suns for the first time in years, and it feels amazing. He knows he has to take it as much as he can when it comes, because nothing else is going to feel like this.

JV is just practice, says Rick. JV doesn’t matter. Yeah, you’re top five now, but that’s not good enough. When they make the real team, next year, you’d better be number one.

Cause there’s only one captain.

He can see that captainship in his head at night. He knows Rick can see it too. As time goes on, he thinks Coach Clayton can see it.

He tries not to think too hard about why tossing a ball back and forth with Moose before first bell actually feels better than Rick paying real attention to him for the first time since his seventh grade soccer team blew their chance for the Junior cup. In fact, he doesn’t think about it at all. He’s too busy thinking about his spiral, and his ball handling, and the new signals Clayton has for them.

There’s not a lot of room in his head for anything else.

* * *

 

 They stay in the library all evening that day Moose needs help with his english, moving to Pop’s only once Mr. Svenson finds them and kicks them out. Pop acknowledges the stack of books with only a raised eyebrow, but brings them a basket of fries on the house. On a school night, the place is almost empty. Not even Jughead is slouched in a back booth, for which Reggie is grateful. Some days he can do with a bit less Jughead in his life.

It’s slow going, but by the end of the night they’re cracking each other up like old friends. They discover they both love the same flavour of milkshake - Pop’s special PB&J concoction, that no one else save Jughead will ever order. And they discover Moose isn’t half as slow as he thinks he is - provided Reggie explains it right. There’s no more moments like the one in the library, and by 9pm, a growing pile of handwritten study sheets in between them, his blue ink pen smoking like a firehouse from writing so fast and so much- he feels good. The kind of good he hasn’t felt in a really long time.

They’re halfway through Truman Capote’s _In Cold Blood_ when Moose shoves the book aside and lowers his big head on the table with a thump. “I can’t anymore.”

“You sure?”

“I can’t.”

“Well,” says Reggie, snapping the textbook closed. “That’s that.” He snaps his fingers, like they’re in a fancy restaurant. “Check please.”

Moose lifts his head up, slowly. Reggie shrugs at him. “The test’s not till Friday.”

“One bill or two, you guys?”

“Two,” says Reggie, flashing his third credit card at the same time as Moose pulls out a change wallet and starts counting out quarters. It’s painful for both of them. Reggie’s cheeks heat up as he swipes the gold, still-new card, and Moose’s ears are decidedly red as he labours over the tip.

 _Hey, let me get it next time_ , Reggie rehearses in his head the whole streetlit walk back to town, but can’t bring himself to speak the words out loud. They walk in companionable silence, the only noise the brush of their sneakers on the pavement.

Moose only lets Reggie walk with him back to the school, claiming he left some stuff there and has errands to run before dinner. Reggie offers to stick around, but Moose turns him down so many times over that he finally gives up, trying to and failing to swallow the hot embarrassment of rejection that sits in his throat like a knot.

“Well,” he says finally, with only a hint of bitterness, “Get home safe.”

“I think I can take care of myself,” cracks Moose, with a wink and a sunshine grin that makes Reggie forget he was mad. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. We’ll do this all over again.”

That wink was the olive branch. He feels so good after that he doesn’t even mind that neither of his dads are home when he gets there. In fact, by the time he gets home he feels, impossibly, that he and Moose are friends. Reggie’s been trying to figure out the secret of making fast friends for the past twelve years. If someone - Betty, maybe - had told him that a little english tutoring was all it took, he’d be a happier guy.

* * *

 

 

He’s eating lunch with a bunch of football sophomores, because there’s a game after school, and they’re supposed to talk strategy. But for some reason the whole team wants to talk about Kevin Keller instead.

“He’s wearing girls clothes,” puts in Chuck, curling his lips like it tastes bad in his mouth to even talk about it. “Think they’re his mom’s?”

Reggie isn’t chiming in much. He doesn’t have a mom, so he wouldn’t have much to contribute to their speculation.

But then damn, hell, what are the odds, speak of the devil - Kevin shows up at their table. He’s on his way to sit with Betty outside, but as he passes he smiles an easy smile and offers: “Hi, Reggie." 

Reggie doesn’t say hi back, but Kevin’s already past them. Every eye at the Bulldog table is on him.

“He’s got some kind of crush on me or something,” complains Reggie. “Gross.”

They all laugh, guileless, careless, cruel laughter, laughter that’s hearty in all those things, laughter that’s like sharks smelling blood. Reggie swallows guilt - Kevin had had it rough in middle school. But this was the real world now, high school. If you couldn’t stand the heat you were going to get burned.

* * *

So they do the tutoring thing four days in a row, always meeting at school - Reggie doesn’t want Moose in his big, empty house, even if there is a working video arcade in it. Moose seems to have similar reservations about his own living conditions, and doesn’t push.

Sometimes Reggie entertains himself by trying to guess what it is exactly that Moose is trying to hide - a challenged relative, an alcoholic parent, a torture chamber in the basement, maybe just a really ugly decorating scheme. But he always feels guilty because the truth of it is that it doesn’t matter. Nothing Moose could be hiding would dissuade him from wanting to follow this friendship through. If Moose was poor as dirt or rich as hell, or lived with his great grandma or had a brother who shot up a school -  it wouldn’t change shit. It wouldn’t change how he feels when Moose smiles at him.

Sometimes when he’s working out an answer to show it to Moose he glances up and finds Moose already looking at him, not intently, but with a kind of soft curiosity. _Soft_ is a word he thinks of very often in relation to Moose, a word he’d never used for people before. Duvets, sure. But he’d never met a person soft as a comforter.

He’d heard their third-grade teacher call Moose soft in the head once. It was nicer than stupid, but not by much. Reggie doesn’t mean it like that. There’s just this kind of aura about him: not only his gentleness, but a rhythm and a sense of easy self-assuredness that he’d never seen in anyone else. Like all his movements had a purpose and they were all blanketed by air.

It all goes back to the hands - big as hell, but that could pick up robin eggs without cracking them. Hands that could send a ball from the outfield into a catcher’s mitt just as easy as you please. And yeah, he’s kind. He’s got a temper on him, but he’s kind. And Reggie knows for the first time what Midge sees in him.

He’d knock anyone flat if they called Moose soft in the head now, but he thinks about it privately, thinks it’s not too far off, if you take it literally. Where other people had bad stuff in their brains - cynicism, hate, greed, envy - it’s like Moose just has this gentleness. It’s not that he’s not all there - Moose was as sound of mind as anyone in that town. He was just a good person. And sometimes it took him longer to arrive places that other people got running.

“I’m dyslexic,” he says to Reggie once.

“Huh.” says Reggie. “Must be a pain.”

Holy _shit_ , the way Moose looks at him after that. Like Reggie put the stars in the sky because he decided not to make fun of him for getting his B’s and P’s confused.

Anyways, Moose gets a C+.

Not just on the test, but for the whole year.

* * *

 

 _I like boys._ He rehearses it in the bedroom mirror, though he has no intention of saying it any time soon and isn’t sure who he’s practicing for. _I like boys_ : he says it in his head four dozen times a day, and before long it becomes a subconscious mantra. At odd moments he’s worried it’s going to slip out of his mouth. He worries so much about that that he stops repeating it to himself for a week so he won’t be used to it anymore.

One day he decides to just say it. At home, because it matters so little there.

He does it in the kitchen doorway. “I like boys.”

“Hm?” Rick, standing behind the island so that he can still see the basketball game blaring in the largest of their many dens, reaches for the remote and turns the TV down. “What did you say, Reggie?”

He almost leaves. Forgets about it. But he’d said it once, and it had been painless enough, so he goes again. “I like boys. Like you.”

Rick looks at him for the first time, and Reggie feels a sudden need to supplant his statement. “And girls. But boys too.”

“Girls and boys too,” says Rick with a distracted nod. “All right.”

Reggie comes closer and pinches a sliver of red pepper off the pristine countertop.

“Hey, uh-” Rick hovers for a second, aware there’s something he’s not doing, some ritual he has failed to complete. Finally he just claps Reggie on the back, like the way he used to when he pitched a no-hitter in little league. “Thanks for telling me.”

Those seem to be the magic words, and with a self-satisfied nod, as though he’s just ticked the final box on the Mantle guide to Good Fucking Parenting, he puts the finishing touches on his salad and heads down to the den to drop back in front of the game. 

Reggie goes to his room and sulks. He bets when Archie spills the beans to his old man he’ll get a fucking parade. Ice cream cone, out to dinner, brand new computer, the works. A car, why not. Condoms for life. Definitely a hug.

And then Fred’ll probably take him to get his ears pierced.

* * *

It’s his first real party with members of the football team. They ask if he thinks Jughead’s gay.

“Probably,” he says. “He’s fucking weird.”

He’s so busy realizing that Moose’s gaze drops to his lap that he almost misses when Jason’s does the same thing. Strange, he thinks, as everyone else erupts into laughter around them and a solid hand finds the small of his back as if to say _job well done_ : the three of them, sitting there in that laughter, all three under the impression they were entirely isolated from it, from one another, from everything. Like three islands in a storm. Three islands and yet Reggie had two dads, and Kevin existed, and Miss Simpkins who taught math had a special female friend with curly auburn hair who came by sometimes and wore too much lipstick.

Only no one noticed except Reggie, because Reggie always notices, the way he noticed how quick Jason’s cuticles became interesting to him when the homophobia came out, and when people laughed. He felt confident he could read Jason like a book, Jughead too, though he was harder - but Moose? How could he say why Moose had looked away from him?

He doesn’t know if he feels like a coward or a victim, and he doesn’t like either option much.  

And yet he says it anyway, says he doesn’t care what gay people do in the bedroom but if Jughead has some kind of obsession with him, he’s going to knock him on his ass.

Because what’s he supposed to say, why don’t we all be friends?

* * *

After that party he’s more popular than ever. The other guys stop acting unhappy about a freshman being top five in JV (top three, if he’s really, really honest) and start rooting for him.

Rick picks up his old favourite cheer - _Come on, Reggie, you’re better than this!_ \- and pulls it out at nearly every game. Reggie’s just happy that he’s there. Yeah, to the outsider, Rick’s an asshole, but he’s only saying that because he believes in Reggie. Much nicer than what Vic had said after the Junior Cup, quietly, thinking Reggie wasn’t listening, that maybe Reggie just wasn’t cut out for sports. That had turned into a four-day-long civil war between his parents, where he’d had to relay messages from one to the other because they weren’t speaking.

He gets a few silent drives home that makes him remember being that kid who’d messed up at little league practice, but mostly Rick wants to talk strategy from the moment he gets in the car, and doesn’t stop even between mouthfuls of dinner. Reggie’s retaining so much information, he feels like a New York cab driver. He feels his brain pressing on the walls of his skull.

It’s during this period of near-daily headaches that he finds out Moose is terrific at giving neck massages. They both like the same corner of the student lounge, and there’s one old green recliner where Moose lets Reggie sit with his back to him as those big, hot hands work magic on his overworked brain and ragged nerves. 

“You’re too tense,” Moose says once, and Reggie laughs without knowing why it’s funny, the laugh coming out bitter and strangled and totally unlike him. After that, Moose doesn’t talk while he’s rubbing Reggie’s neck, just does it.

 _Muscular therapy_ , he tells anyone who sees them at it. _Not a massage. We’re athletes. And I’m the one winning all our games. He should be thanking me._

* * *

They win their last big game against their biggest rival, and then Reggie knows he’s number one. Number one in JV is different from being number one next year, he knows, but it’s a hell of a good start, and the promise of being next year’s number one-two-or-three is looking pretty slick. One-or-two-or-three gets to be Captain, and Reggie knows he’s gonna be at least number two. Between Rick and Clayton and the neck massages, it’s a surefire thing.

But it’s weird, because he isn’t thinking about any of that when they win - it’s Reggie’s pass and Moose’s touchdown that takes the game, and Clayton’s so happy he throws the clipboard that otherwise never leaves his hand at the sky like a graduation cap. When it comes down, it narrowly avoids beaning Professor Weatherbee on the shiny helicopter pad of his bald head. But Reggie doesn’t see that either.

Because when they win Moose runs to him in the centre of the field and lifts him up in a hug and then rips Reggie’s helmet right off his head, and for a long, sweet sixty seconds, Reggie thinks Moose is going to kiss him.

He doesn’t, of course. But if Reggie had been a girl he would have, and things are so awkward between them when Reggie’s feet land back on the ground that Moose has to hug him again so it doesn’t look weird, and that second hug is just as nice as the first. And then their teammates are rushing them, and Reggie ends up with a mouthful of carrot-coloured hair in his mouth when Archie gets there for a hug, and he’s so busy trying not to die with his helmet off in a crowd of sweaty, heavyset guys that he forgets to be upset, or hurt.

Everyone’s congratulating them when they get back to the bench, Moose grinning like the fucking sun all over again, shiny and bright and pleased as punch, and Reggie, breathless, seeing and feeling nothing but that moment of total weightlessness when Moose had scooped him up off the ground, the upturned glow of Moose’s face under him, and the endless brightness of his eyes.

Midge isn’t a cheerleader yet, but she vaults onto the field anyway and hugs Moose tight around his waist. Even though it’s only JV, the fans are going nuts. Reggie searches for Rick, or even Vic, in the crowd, but the sun is too bright and everyone is dressed the same. He sees Fred, but Fred doesn’t see him - he’s busy screaming for Archie and hugging him like old tangerine-top himself had shit the ball out his ass in the eleventh hour and laid it gently down in the end zone with his bare hands. Never mind that Archie had been nowhere near the action. Never mind that Archie was benched for most of the game anyway.

But then his parents are there, not hugging exactly, but Vic snakes an arm around his waist and Rick claps a hand possessively down on his bruised shoulder. When Clayton’s rescued his clipboard from the bleachers he jogs over to tell the two of them they should be proud. Reggie sees that captainship glittering in Clayton’s eyes, sees him hungrily putting together a football team with Reggie on it, the type of team that would bring home the Championship trophy.

“That’s my boy,” says Rick, which is the nicest thing he’s said in a long time. “But we’ve got to go over that ball control.”

* * *

 

Reggie’s fifteen now, and he and Moose are still friends. Moose is still with Midge come September, but only as a matter of course, and Reggie hasn’t seen her around much lately.

 _Jason_ is the name on everyone’s lips, and Reggie kind of wishes they’d go back to talking about Reggie for a bit. Not enough to drown himself in Sweetwater to make it happen, but enough to put up a fuss whenever someone wants to speculate on how the old JB met his untimely end. It’s not just because he keeps having that flash of a vision of Jason staring at his hands at that party, either, the one that makes him feel like a graverobber or a murderer or both. He just doesn’t want to talk about it. Reggie’s more concerned about making the team, anyways. 

They don’t use the corner with the green recliner anymore: being sophomores entitles them to stretch out on the beat-up old sofa, usually with Reggie’s legs in Moose’s lap, sometimes with his head there if no one else is around. Moose plays with his hair when he does that, which is almost as good as the massages.

They’ve tripped some magic wire as sophomores too that allows them to be more handsy with each other: Reggie more so, but that’s always how he’s been with guys - it’s a learned skill, certainly not taught in his hands-off household, but one that he’s acclimatized himself to after years of organized sports. They’re always shoving each other up against stuff, and Reggie counts the bruises later with an odd kind of reverence. It’s a thing you do as football buddies, the ol’ bro-shove, nothing meant, just masculine violence in it’s most harmless form. And if Reggie throws an arm around Moose a lot, or leans against him, or kicks his legs up into his lap every time they sit down, no one overthinks it, because they’re friends! And it’s always been like that.

And it feels nice.

So they eat lunch together, and every free period and football practice they spend time together, and he starts wanting more and more of it, because Moose is like a drug he can’t get enough of (or what he imagines a drug high to be like - Reggie took those middle-school anti-drug campaigns to heart because drugs got you thrown off football teams or at least fucked up your lungs enough to bench you for a season). But he doesn’t say anything about it, mostly because he’s still in denial, more because he doesn’t want to ruin one of the strongest friendships he’s ever had.

He doesn’t ask himself what this casual acquaintanceship - they’re just teammates after all - being his strongest relationship says about the rest of the friendships he’s ever had. It’s too depressing. And there’s enough of that around since ol’ Jason kicked the bucket.

* * *

 

 Oh, and Archie’s hot now.

Reggie’s had Archie pegged for awhile, and he knows Kevin has too, though Kevin doesn’t talk about it. It’s easy - extremely easy, which makes it a rookie mistake - to dismiss Archie as a clueless straight guy. He fits the mold like a key in a lock. But Reggie knows, even if Archie himself hasn’t figured it out yet.

It’ll probably be Jughead, in the end. The friends-since-kindergarten thing always ends up that way, and Jughead’s about as straight as wet spaghetti. They’re a time bomb waiting to happen. It’s almost sweet. 

Six little islands, he thinks, remembering the isolation of that party, thinking of Agatha Christie. Himself. Moose. Archie. Jughead. Kevin. Jason. 

Only Jason was gone.

And then there were five.

* * *

 

Reggie’s fifteen, and he asks a boy to a school dance.

As friends, obviously. A duo of stags, he assures Moose, the stuff buddy comedies are made of - he may as well have dropped to his knees with a Toastee Flakes decoder ring and asked if his best _bro_ would be his wingman and help him get some _tits_ but, whatever. It’s a step. And Moose seems pretty happy about it. More relaxed that he’s been with all the school dances Reggie’s seen him at with Midge, but maybe that’s wishful thinking, or maybe it’s the punch talking.

Yeah, he spiked the punch. Typical Reggie. Moose laughs like an idiot when he finds out.

“Typical Reggie,” he says.

Reggie doesn’t even mind that Archie comes swanning in with two girls on his arm, including the new brunette that he’d kind of had his eye on. Archie was too much of an idiot to hang on to a good thing for long, and that childhood-friends-wet-spaghetti bomb is still ticking to go off. Though he hasn’t seen Jughead sulking around old carrot-top lately. Maybe that bomb had blown over the summer.

An interesting thought.

* * *

 

He’s not sure who comes up with the book.

He might have helped with the ratings system, but that was just because the guys valued his opinion. Who was he to say no?

And Reggie’s a math whiz, one who knows the value of empirical evidence. If someone turns up calling him gay when he has a 9 next to his name plus two bonus points for scoring both Debbie and Dilly Dalton in the same week, who are they going to believe?

That book is a nice cushion between him and the pavement - it’s one of those nets firefighters use to catch people jumping out of burning buildings. To keep them from turning to hamburger soda on the street.

Moose’s name never shows up in it. It’s because he has a steady girlfriend, some of the guys say. They respect that.

* * *

It’s October when they break the seal. Moose needs a quiet place to do homework, and Reggie’s parents are away on a month-long getaway type business thing. They’ve promised to call, but haven’t yet. Reggie wonders if they’re going to come home with a divorce: Rick and Vic usually can’t stand each other for long. Choosing between them is about the last thing he needs in his life, but then again, they made him do that so often as a kid that the stress of it kind of wore off.

“It’s really big,” says Moose, about Reggie’s room. “Why do you have so many pictures of yourself?”

“So I don’t forget what I look like,” he cracks, which isn’t very funny, but Moose laughs anyway. Then Moose’s eye falls on the record player, precariously balanced on a stack of fifty other birthday gifts that Reggie hasn’t even touched.

“Woah, cool.” he says, flying to it. “Can we play records?”

“Knock yourself out.” Reggie has a whole crate of them, still in the cellophane. Moose picks one at random and puts it on. He seems to know what he’s doing, never fumbling with the needle despite being born long after records should have been nothing more than glorified coasters. His eyes are so bright as he watches it spin that Reggie actually makes a mental note to thank whichever of his parents had bought it for him.

“You know, I haven’t used this thing since I got it,” Reggie volunteers, “and I had no idea how it even worked. I’m an iPod guy. So if you want it, you take it.”

Moose actually takes a step away from it, his voice as soft as ever. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t take it. It’s expensive. It’s yours.”

No amount of persuasion can get Moose to take the thing off his hands, proving even the old Mantle charm is fallible at times. But he comes by all throughout the year to see it and the next four days of that week, eyes lit up like a kid with a toy train. Sometimes he complements Reggie on the way the records sound as though he doesn’t know Reggie’s ear for music begins and ends discerning the difference of one Bruno Mars song from another.

December first he can’t take it anymore, and thrusts it, wrapped in brown paper, into Moose’s lap when he comes over to study.

“Merry Christmas.”

Moose is trying to give it back. “You’re Jewish.”

“Happy Hanukkah” he says sarcastically, which makes Moose laugh. Which Reggie would rather listen to than some old records any day.

* * *

 

He prints out the Ten Little Indians poem and shows it to Moose, who wrinkles his nose and says Native American is the term he should use. It’s a drizzly November night after a drizzly football game, which had ended in a slight win for Riverdale. Maybe because of the rain, it feels like they lost anyway. They’re having Peanut Butter and Jelly shakes at Pop’s, like the old days.

There’s fog out, creeping through the parking lot and spinning webs between all their cars. He asks Moose if he’s ever seen The Mist. Moose says he’s not allowed to watch horror movies at home, because it scares his younger siblings something awful.

“Two bills or one today, boys?”

They never quite know how to answer this anymore.

* * *

And then Reggie’s cross-legged on the bed in Moose’s little room, and Moose is cross-legged across from him, and _Any Way You Want It_ by Journey is playing on the record player that used to be his. Moose is telling a story about football, but Reggie isn’t following. He’s watching the way the light changes on Moose’s eyelashes.

“Hey, Moose?” asks Reggie, the thumping blood in his ears turning into a tingle that runs all the way down his neck and into his fingertips.

“Yeah?” Moose frowns at him, looking sweet and strong and _softer_ than Reggie’s ever fucking seen him.

For a long moment he thinks he’s not going to be able to say it. That he’s going to go home to Vic - Rick was off for work in some five star hotel smoking cigars by a pool and flirting with the towel-boys - and cry into his cool, impersonal embrace like a kid for the first time since he was a kid, since the day he lost at little league and Moose stayed out with him in that field putting slow ones over the plate.

But somehow he finds his voice, all on his own, and he says it.

“Kiss me.”

And Moose reaches up, and puts those warm, strong, wrap-around hands on each side of Reggie’s face where they belong, and Moose kisses him.

* * *

 

Reggie’s fifteen, and he knows how Archie must have felt when that bomb went off.

(If it went off at all - Jughead’s acting _really_ weird, like, weirder than normal, and Reggie suddenly has more dirt on Archie than he’s ever wanted in his life - everything except if he’d kissed Jughead or not. But whatever. None of his goddamn beeswax.)

The thing is, neither of them know how much of a relationship they want. Reggie presses one of Moose’s big warm hands to the centre of his chest and promises him it doesn’t have to be stressful, they can be friends and teammates who occasionally kiss and that’s fine. Only a few months into that, he realizes they can write that off as experimentation if they try, and Moose means more to him than that. Because Reggie’s as good at chem as he is at physics, and Reggie’s experimented, and tested all the variables, and Reggie doesn’t need a double spaced, 12pt report to known the outcome.

The outcome is that he wants to do more than kiss Moose.

The outcome is that he wants to look Pop Tate in the eye and say “one bill”.

They figure out it feels really nice to hold hands, even if it’s just in private. They take turns picking up the tab on drizzly days at Pop’s. Two peanut-butter-and-jelly shakes comes out to $11.75 that year, which is a whole five cents more than when he got Moose through english with a C+. But inflation’s a bitch, what can you do.

And they kiss. Again. And again. And a couple more times for good measure.

But it’s casual, it really is. Once or twice, Moose seems like he wants to take the next step, but Reggie keeps stepping back from it, taking so many steps back he might as well be a line dancer. Something about that poem. Something about the new girl. Something about Kevin Keller. Something about prioritizing football and it really not being a good time, not with that whole _Jason was totally killed probably by one of us,_ thing.

But he knows the real reason: he’s scared.

He’s scared of the fog.

* * *

He stops Kevin just outside the gym, right after the last period bell. “Hey, Kevin.” Reggie swallows, embarrassed. “Can we talk?”

It hurts to look at him. He’d never had anything against Kevin, never harboured anything even resembling revulsion toward him. It hurts that he had pretended he did.

“I wanted to apologize for - I said something kind of assholeish about you awhile ago.”

If Kevin’s upset, he doesn’t show it at all. “What was it?” he asks, with a totally nonchalant curiosity that makes Reggie wonder if Kevin had heard what he’d said. 

“I uh- was sitting with a bunch of the football guys and said you had a crush on me and that it was gross.”

Kevin looks totally blank. “That’s it?”

“That’s - what do you mean that’s it?”

Kevin shrugs. “I didn’t even hear you.”

Reggie wants to cry, and he doesn’t know why. He wants to bawl. Reggie doesn’t regret a lot of things in his life, but that remark at lunch when he was a freshman is one of them. If he could take anything back it’d be that, including the time he cut off the top of his finger at age eight.

Kevin’s smiling at him, not a real smile, but genuine enough - as small and thin as if it was drawn on. “Forget about it, Reggie.”

But it’s not enough. He can’t forget about it, and he doesn’t want to. He wants forgiveness. He wants trust. He wants Kevin as an ally in this long and cold road, more than he wants Jason or Jughead or Archie or even Moose.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets and looks at Kevin - Kevin who didn’t care, Kevin who had been bullied mercilessly since the second grade, Kevin who had once had to say _I like boys_ to his own dad, maybe in his own kitchen. “Can we - can we just start over?" 

Kevin still looks baffled, probably that he’s being asked to forget something that he had no memory of until now. “Sure.”

“No.” Reggie swallows, and it hurts. “I really want you to mean that. Cause I don’t deserve it, but I -”

“Reggie.” He can hear the period at the end of the word, and for a moment he remembers that Kevin’s dad is a sheriff. “Don’t worry about it. We all say shitty things." 

Kevin smiles, and Reggie knows he’s forgiven him, just like he’d wanted him to, and yet he doesn’t feel better. Not yet.

“Sometimes I, uh - I think I’m kind of jealous of you.”

“Why?” asks Kevin.

“Cause you know who you are.”

Kevin just smiles more, and shakes his head. “No one does, Reggie. It’s high school.”

* * *

“You need a ride, Reg?”

It’s Fred, looking harmless in a pair of beat-up jeans and a pearl-gray T-shirt. The lettering is so faded he can’t make it out, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it said World’s Greatest Dad at some point. Reggie totally lost the dad lottery, and he had two tickets in the game. Both of whom are really late picking him up. 

A memory comes to him all of a sudden out of nowhere, one he must have repressed the way he put all the memories away that he wasn’t ready to deal with. Himself age seven, after yet another ball game his dads hadn’t shown up to, hidden securely under the bleachers with the garbage and dog shit, far back enough that the slats wouldn’t shine light on his face. In tears, naturally, the kind of snotty, unhappy crying that everyone does best at seven and then pretends to outgrow. And Fred, ducking his head under, looking at him with the same harmless expression, asking him - as if Reggie owned real estate under there - if there was room for two.

“Nah, I’m okay.”

“Everything okay with you?”

“Boy trouble.” he says, and waits for the reaction.

Fred just smiles. “I had that too, when I was your age.”

And all at once it feels like it’s been raining inside him for months and months and it’s stopped. Like a dam bursting in reverse, all the water flowing back in.

If he gets in Fred’s car, it’s only two minutes to home.

He gets in the car.

“I heard you used to have an earring,” he says.

* * *

“Hey, Reg!”

Old Carrot-top himself, waving at him from the jukebox. Reggie goes over to see what he wants.

Archie leans conspiratorially toward him. “Valerie wants to double-date. She has this really cute friend. I told her you’d be down. I know you’re not seeing anyone, so-”  

There’s something else, but Reggie tunes out the rest of it. A group of bulldogs had just come in, mostly sophomores, but a few frosh, the three-two-one’s of the JV team, he bets. Moose is easily the tallest of the pack, but his eyes skip over the jukebox without seeing Reggie, and for a long while Reggie just enjoys looking at him, tracing the curve of his neck with his eyes, the broad shoulders, the arms, the proud tilt of his chin.

Moose slides into the opposite side of the booth, and his eyes land on Reggie at last. He smiles, and lifts a hand.

 _You got big hands_ , he had said once, in the little league playing field.

He realizes he doesn’t care how cute Valerie’s friend is. He realizes he’d no rather go on a double date than accompany his dad to vegas that weekend and hold his drink while he lost at blackjack.

“Actually,” he says, cutting Archie off, though his eyes never stray from Moose’s face, across the room. “I can’t.”

“You can’t?” He sounds a lot like Fred sometimes.

“No.” Moose smiles at Reggie again from across the room, and Reggie smiles back, and that's how it really starts, just like that, just as easy as you please. “I just realized, uh -  I’m seeing someone.”


End file.
